Translated with the support of The Florence Gould Foundation
Umberto Eco is best known to the general public for his novels and critical works in which he developed his theory of reception. Who realizes, however, that this aspect of his work is only one part of a general semiology organized around a philosophy of signs?
Did you think a tree was just branches and leaves? Then enter the fascinating world of spruces, lime trees and oaks, a forest in which trees support and compete with one other, thriving thanks to their boundless ingenuity.
Since their declaration in 1789 human rights have been the subject of numerous critiques. Even nowadays, they are accused of being detrimental to democracy and of favouring individualism. But these accusations, J. Lacroix and J.-Y. Pranchère explain, are not founded.
Manuel Gárate looks back at the economic revolution that has taken place in Chile since 1975, at huge social and political costs. A much-needed perspective in a context where the United States, Pinochet’s former protector, is turning towards populism and protectionism.
Will Leibniz’s philosophy turn us into ecologists? This is the bet of Pauline Phemister who, building upon Leibniz’s theory of perception and of the interdependence of beings, shows that biodiversity is a form of beauty, and that its destruction impoverishes our experience.
The experience of the Second World War prompted the in-depth reform of psychiatry, as social factors were included in the explanation of psychic illnesses. It also served as a justification for the psychiatric and political re-education of political opponents—as Ana Antic shows, based on patient files from a Yugoslav institute.
Given the large number of social transfers that already exist in France, would a basic income provide a more efficient way of fighting poverty? To do so, it would have to be set high and supplement existing forms of social protection. On these grounds, Clément Cadoret questions this idea’s financial and political feasibility.
David Miller takes a clear stance on immigration: states have the right to close their borders, but also, to a certain extent, the duty to welcome refugees. His arguments, however, are not entirely convincing.
Is the Supreme Court democratic? No, replies Jeremy Waldron, who considers that the judicial branch should not substitute itself for citizens to determine their rights. But is his view of the separation of powers still valid today?
To increase citizen participation and political responsiveness, today new civic tech claims to be ‘hacking’ democracy. Going beyond their immediate appeal, can these technologies deeply transform politics? What project do they propose?
During the Soviet era, October 1917 was the central political and cultural reference. One hundred years later, Russian society is still deeply divided over its past. Will the centenary of the Revolution be the great moment of national reconciliation the Russian power wants it to be?
Minority sexualities give rise to much discourse, which is more widely ranging than it is broadly disseminated. As much as the question of their actual practice, these sexualities raise the issue of how to talk about them. Halfway between essay and fiction, Marco Vidal offers some potential avenues to explore.
In February 2016, South Korea decided to close the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex in protest against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Previously, it had not framed denuclearisation as a prerequisite for collaboration between the two Koreas – a change of course that may prove ill advised.
The popular history of France told by Michelle Zancarini-Fournel is the history of often hidden individual figures and political struggles. By filling our “memory gaps,” Zancarini-Fournel also suggests another narrativity.
Given the United Kingdom’s impending split from the European Union, Laurent Warlouzet shows how their complex relationship is the fruit of strategic co-operations, resulting from the vagaries of history, rather than of any “natural” isolationism.
In order to fix a society, it is not necessary to wield the “civilising” stick of republicanism. The novels of George Sand, far from being mere rustic tales, propose a clandestine way of doing politics – a democratic project undertaken with no preaching or violence.
The omnipresence of the term ‘populism’ only serves to underline its semantic and ideological ambiguity. According to J.-W. Müller, populists claim that they and they alone represent the popular will and are both a reflection of political institutions in crisis and a threat to democracy.
Economic progress is behind us in the West, warns Robert J. Gordon in a 750 pages-tome which revisits the economic history of the U.S. in the last century and a half. Measuring the impact on living standards of the major technological breakthroughs of the “second industrial revolution,” he observes that sources of productivity growth seem to have dried since the 1970s oil shock and that the productivity-enhancing effects of the digital “revolution” have so far proved elusive.
Paleontologists distinguish five periods of mass disappearance of animal species. Are we now entering the sixth period—that of human extinction? Either way, the question brings us back to the fragility of our life conditions. So just a word to the wise!
From a “minor event”, the execution of two traitors from the Aosta Valley in 1943, Sergio Luzzatto offers us an extensive depiction of the history and memory of the Resistance against a backdrop of Jew hunts, denunciations, and civil war.
Was the “Terror” Robespierre’s fault? His name alone has symbolised revolutionary tragedies for two centuries now. Nonetheless, it is a whole different protagonist, once cautious, discreet and indecisive, that the historian, Jean-Clément Martin, invites us to rediscover.
Behind the violent debates that have shaken up South African universities, it is the whole legacy of colonialism and of the apartheid era that is at stake. This allows Ernst Wolff to question the status of contemporary African philosophy.
By studying key concepts such as frontier, wilderness and rewilding in the United States, William Cronon shows that human history unfolds within a geographical framework, using natural resources that profoundly shape it. This serves as a reminder that ecology is a humanism.
The black ghetto has garnered much attention from researchers and American society alike. Revisiting the intellectual trajectory of many of its key thinkers, ethnographer Mitchell Duneier examines the consolidation of its progressive layers of meaning. An endeavour in intellectual, political, and social history.
Alongside the usual reductive condemnations, studies on pornography have increased in the academic world. Florian Vörös examines the field’s key texts, which reveal the diversity of productions and uses of pornography and analyse the emotional experiences pornography awakens as well as the hierarchies it shapes and recreates.
After the war on poverty, the United States declared a war on crime. This history of penal policy since 1960 looks at the intellectual and political roots of the punitive treatment often reserved for minorities.
In Poland, one can purchase a strange good luck charm to become rich: the picture of a Jew holding a gold coin. What is the significance of this popular re-appropriation of the figure of the Jew in the context of post-Holocaust Poland? And how conscious are anti-Semitic prejudices in this representation?
What responses does racial stigma awaken in its victims? Researching in Brazil, the United States and Israel, a group of sociologists sheds new light on the experience of discrimination and collective sources of resilience.
Far from lessening inequality between social groups in France, the organisation of the healthcare system and the practices of healthcare professionals actually serve to increase disparity. The sociology of social relations shows that the health system is not used or organised in the same way depending on the social class to which patients belong.
Since Narenda Modi, the strongman of Hindu nationalism, was elected prime minister, discrimination against minorities has increased in India and freedom of expression no longer seems guaranteed. Can Indian democracy resist the rise of an authoritarian and xenophobic right?
Retracing the genealogy of the idea of human ‘races’, Claude-Olivier Doron returns to the role of the Enlightenment, and particularly Buffon, in the emergence of monogenistic racial thought. He examines how the idea of ‘race’ and the affirmation of universalism appeared concomitantly.
The texts are clear: far from proscribing joking and joviality, Muslim culture gives significant place to laughter, whether by madmen, social parasites, and Bedouins or by the two main figures of authority, the caliph and the Prophet themselves.
Do animals have a moral life in the same way as humans do? The philosopher Alice Crary argues that they are visible bearers of moral qualities, as literature suggests. But can values be the object of empirical observation?
The border between Bangladesh and India has created an artificial rift within a space connected by intense circulations. Thrown into illegality, the many migrants who continue to circulate between the two States face heightened risks of exploitation and increasing marginalisation.
Neither passante nor pedestrian, the flâneuse has been left out of history books. Yet, according to Lauren Elkin, flânerie is connected to emancipation, and to revolt. Is urban space then a feminist issue?
Sociologist Marie Loison-Leruste shows how address registration is for homeless persons the key to gaining access to rights. She suggests that, beyond reflecting on the question of non-take-up, the state must urgently back the professionals who support the homeless.
Can an algorithm predict crime? For several years, United States police forces have used software that is said to detect the locations of future crimes and offences. Of the many companies working in this field, Predpol is the name that is mentioned the most. But the success of this Californian start-up is more the result of marketing than any actual predictive effectiveness. The stance of this paper is twofold: first, a closer look from the seismologist who developed the algorithm reveals that this solution is far from having the predictive capacity boasted by its promoters. Second, the ethical problem with Predpol’s algorithm appears not to be police discrimination, as many feared, but rather the exclusion of a section of the population from the public security offering.
We should not be misled by the The Revenant’s hyperrealism: Iñárritu’s film is a brilliant filmmaker’s ego trip more than it is an accurate depiction of the trapper’s role in conquering the American West. Despite its meticulous reconstruction of living conditions at the time, the film is teeming with clichés and approximations.
In a multidisciplinary book, Catherine Coquio shows that behind the contemporary cult for memory and truth lies a crisis that is preventing us from moving forward.
Whereas in France police forces deemed guilty of brutality have called for a demonstration against “anti-cop hatred,” in Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, the interaction between the police and protesters is marked by restraint and dialogue. The French police are resisting the new models of policing built around the concept of de-escalation. Olivier Fillieule and Fabien Jobard explain the reasons for this doctrinal retrenchment.